Saturday, April 19, 2008

Jeremiah 17:1-14 Why we need a heart transplant.

The sin of Judah is written with an iron stylus.With a diamond point it is engraved on the tablet of their heartsand on the horns of their altars,2 while their children remember their altars and their • Asherah poles, by the green trees on the high hills—3 My mountains in the countryside. Your wealth and all your treasures I will give up as plunder because of the sin of your • high placeswithin all your borders.4 You will, of yourself, relinquish your inheritance that I gave you. I will make you serve your enemies in a land you do not know,for you have set My anger on fire;it will burn forever.

5 This is what the Lord says: Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, who makes [human] flesh his strength and turns his heart from the Lord.6 He will be like a juniper in the • Arabah;he cannot see when good comes but dwells in the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land where no one lives.7 Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence indeed is the Lord.8 He will be like a tree planted by water:it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn’t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.

9 The heart is more deceitful than anything else and desperately sick—who can understand it?10 I, the Lord, examine the mind, I test the heartto give to each according to his way, according to what his actions deserve.11 He who makes a fortune unjustly is [like]a partridge that hatches eggs it didn’t lay. In the middle of his days [his riches]will abandon him, so in the end he will be a fool.12 A throne of gloryon high from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary,13 Lord, the hope of Israel,all who abandon You will be put to shame. All who turn away from Me will be written in the dirt, for they have abandoned the fountain of living water, the Lord.

14 Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me, and I will be saved, for You are my praise.

Heart troubles, the biggest killer. 1 out of 1 will die of heart failure.

The heart is the most vital organ of the human body. People can live even if they are missing certain valuable members of their bodies — things like hands, legs, feet, eyes or ears, but no one can live without a heart. Not only is the heart the most vital organ of the body, it is considered to be the center or source of our emotions — our personality, thoughts and feelings. The heart is closely connected with our moods, energies, convictions, indeed our very nature. Daily we use words like heartache, heartbroken, heartfelt, heartless, heartsick, after one’s own heart, change of heart, from the bottom of one’s heart, have a heart, in one’s heart of hearts, take heart, with all one’s heart, with half a heart, lose heart, and near one’s heart.

The heart then is the most vital element of physical life. We take great care to maintain its health so that we will not suffer heart attack or heart failure. We are careful to exercise, eat properly, and check our cholesterol.

1. The Diagnosis Of The Horror Of Our Hearts

Our hearts are our biggest problem. 1, 9

Deep seated problem, fundamentally flawed. Jer 17:1 The sin of Judah is written with an iron stylus. With a diamond point it is engraved on the tablet of their hearts and on the horns of their altars, Only 1 tool referred to here an iron stylus with a diamond point to engrave upon stones.

Every one thinks of changing humanity nobody thinks of changing themselves –Tolstoy.

Our Hearts are Unfathomable. “who can understand it?”

Each of us is driven by deep seated desires and we have these mechanisms and defenses. We are a mystery to others and a mystery to ourselves.

Highly intelligent people trying to understand themselves. They may be Masters of the Ottoman empire, but not of themselves.

A recent article in Newsweek had this to say about the roots of evil:

In their search for the nature and roots of evil, scholars from fields as diverse as sociology, psychology, philosophy and theology are reaching a far more chilling conclusion. Most people do have the capacity for horrific evil, they say: the traits of temperament and character from which evil springs are as common as flies on carrion. “The capacity for evil is a human universal,” says psychiatrist Robert I. Simon, director of the program in Psychiatry and Law at Georgetown University School of Medicine. “There is a continuum of evil, of course, ranging from ‘trivial evils’ like cutting someone off in traffic, to greater evils like acts of prejudice, to massive evils like those perpetrated by serial sexual killers. But within us all are the roots of evil.

These experts agree with Jeremiah: the problem lies within us, in our deceitful hearts. Jesus said, “The things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile a man” (Matt 15:18).

Our Hearts Are Incurable

They are desperately ill. We have a very desperate spiritual sickness in our hearts.

Our Hearts Are Known By God. Vs 10 I, the Lord, examine the mind, I test the heart to give to each according to his way, according to what his actions deserve.

X-ray at airport. Someone now knows the inside of your shoes better than you do!

The ethical and emotional responses deep within a spiritual x ray. We are constantly under an MRI, God’s ultrasound leaves no secret uncovered.

We think we can conceal our deceptive hearts. Well, we may be able to fool most of the people most of the time, but we cannot fool God. God sees everything, because he searches the heart. He said to Samuel when the prophet anointed David as king, that He “sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” Adam tried to hide in the garden and failed. We can’t hide, either, even in church. The source of our problem is a deceitful heart. We would be wise to accept this diagnosis, because God knows all about it.

There is one symptom that stands out most clearly in the diagnosis of our heart problems. Upon what does our heart hope? Upon what do we trust most deeply?

Jeremiah 17: 5 This is what the Lord says: Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, who makes [human] flesh his strength and turns his heart from the Lord.

7 Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence indeed is the Lord.

The results of this symptom? Well that leads to our prognosis. What is the ongoing effect of this heart problem? problem?

2. The Prognosis of An Unhealthy Heart

Now what is the prognosis for our chronic heart condition? If we do not attend to

our heart and keep trusting in human things, we are headed for disaster. God says that the man who trusts in mankind and whose heart turns away from him will

be cursed. He will lead a dry, lonely, isolated, withered life. This is what we discover in the three metaphors in verse 6: a bush in the desert, stony wastes in the wilderness, and a land of salt without inhabitants. The bush is perhaps a juniper, a shrub with a stunted root system that does not penetrate to the water level beneath the surface.

The other night I laid awake a fair while. I had a severe pain in my chest. I was wondering if I could feel the pain running down my arm. Was it a shooting pain, or was it merely indigestion. I figured after a few hours that it was in fact that last glass of water before bed. And wow it hurt. Wouldn’t you like to be able to monitor your heart and check if that little spasm is the real thing or a fake? Wouldn’t you like to have that information available to you immediately. Yet how about your heart? Is it right with God? The heart we are talking about is the central core of our being. Well the Lord gives Jeremiah some tests to see what is going on there, and some help to hearken to the need to get our hearts right with Him.

‘He shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited. He shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.’ — Jeremiah 17:6, 8.

The prophet Jeremiah here puts before us two interesting pictures. In the one, the hot desert stretches on all sides. Every green thing is gone, because the heat of the sun kills it. The salt particles in the soil glitter in the light. No living creature breaks the solitude. It is a waste land. Here and there is a stunted, grey, prickly shrub struggling to live, and just manages not to die. But it hasn’t got any beautiful leaf, there is no profitable fruit; and it only serves to make the desolation more desolate.

The other carries us to some brimming river, where everything lives because water has come. The presence or absence of running water makes the difference between barrenness and fertility.

I can’t help but think of beautiful weeping willows, but in Jeremiah’s mind there is the fruit tree, bearing its fruit. Maclaren “Dipping their boughs in the sparkling current, and driving their roots through the moist soil, the bordering trees lift aloft their pride of foliage and bear fruits in their season.”

The two pictures represent two sorts of men; one who still lives with a corrupting heart, and the other, who through trusting the Lord, has had his heart changed. One person diverts his heart-capacities of love and trust away from God, and instead clings to other things, other ideas, other people; ‘making flesh his arm and departing from the living God’; the other, he who leans the whole weight of his needs and cares and sins and sorrows upon God. He seeks to have his deceitful heart changed.

We can choose whether to have the horrible heart healed or we can choose to have the horrible heart remain uncured. And the way to have it cured is to trust, to cast these hearts upon the Lord. We can choose which shall be the object of our trust, and whichever way we choose, we can see ourselves in Jeremiah’s picture. The experience of these vivid pictures will be ours. There are comparisons for us to see here.

I. Are you in the desert, or by the river?

Jeremiah 17: 5 This is what the Lord says: Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, who makes [human] flesh his strength and turns his heart from the Lord. 6 He will be like a juniper in the • Arabah; he cannot see when good comes but dwells in the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land where no one lives

7 Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence indeed is the Lord.

8 He will be like a tree planted by water: it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn’t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.

Underneath the pictures there lies this thought, that the direction of a man’s trust determines the whole direction of his life, because it determines, as it were, the soil in which he grows. You can choose where you will grow. Plants don’t get that choice. They are fixed. But we can walk, and we can choose where we shall be planted. We can choose the soil we shall be planted in. We can choose where we shall draw our inspiration, our confidence, our security. The man that chooses to trust in any creature thereby wills, though he does not know it, that he shall dwell in a ‘salt land and not inhabited.’ The man that chooses to cast his whole self into the arms of God, and in a paroxysm of self-distrust to realise the divine helpfulness and presence, that man will soon know that he is ‘planted by the river.’

If a man makes that fatal choice which so many of us are making, of shutting out God from his confidence and his love, and squandering these upon earth and upon creatures, he is as fatally out of harmony with his Creator.

Where is the soil in which I can grow best? There is only one answer to that question. You were made for God, and in God alone is the natural place for you to be planted and grow. You or I will never be right, never feel that we are in our native soil, and in the appropriate surroundings, until we have laid our hearts at rest in the Lord.

The way your spirit is made testifies that God, and nothing less, is your portion. We are built for God, and unless we recognise and act upon that conviction, we are like the prickly shrub in the desert, unable to find soil moist enough for us to draw refreshment and vitality from it.

It is insane then to try to draw what we need from creatures, from ourselves, from visible and material things, when we are made to draw our security and our sufficiency from God.

Where else will you find love that will never fail, nor change, nor die? Where else will you find an object for the intellect that will yield inexhaustible material of contemplation and delight? Where else infallible direction for the will? Where else shall weakness find unfailing strength, or sorrow, adequate consolation, or hope, certain fulfilment, or fear, a safe hiding-place?

None other Lamb, none other Name, None other hope in heav'n or earth or sea,None other hiding-place from guilt and shame, None beside Thee. My faith burns low, my hope burns low; Only my heart's desire cries out in meBy the deep thunder of its want and woe, Cries out to Thee. Lord, Thou art Life, though I be dead; Love's fire Thou art, however cold I be;Nor heaven have I, nor place to lay my head, Nor home but Thee.

Oh! then, turn away your heart’s confidence and love from earth and creatures; for until the roots of your life go down into God, and you draw your life from Him, you are not in your right soil.

II. Are you heading for trouble or heading for heaven?

This is what the Lord says: Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, who makes [human] flesh his strength and turns his heart from the Lord.

he will not see prosperity when it comes.

2 Cor 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

Romans 1:18 For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth,

When you set your trust upon the things of this life, you blind yourself to your greatest good. Your judgment becomes perverted. This why people are content with the superficial and partial joys that may be drawn from human loves and companionship and material things. It is because they have gone blind. They have foolishly trusted in the wrong things, and this has blinded their hearts. If you are content with things of this life, then you just do not know real good when you see it, and you have lost the power of discerning what is really for your benefit and your real joy.

“There is nothing sadder in this world than the conspiracy into which men seem to have entered -to ignore the highest good, and to profess themselves contented with the lowest.” Maclaren. Martin Luther tells how a company of swine were offered all manner of dainty and refined foods, and how, with a unanimous swinish grunt, they answered that they preferred the warm, reeking ‘grains’ from the mash-tub.

‘He cannot see when good cometh.’ God comes, and I would rather have some more money. God comes, and I prefer some woman’s love. God comes, and I would rather have a prosperous business. God comes, and I prefer beer. This man cannot see the real good when it is right there in front of his face, because the false direction of his confidence has blinded his eyes, and he cannot open his heart to it.

It comes, but it does not come in. It surrounds him, but it does not enter into him. You are plunged, as it were, in a sea of real joy, which will be yours if your heart’s direction is towards God, and, like some sealed flask, dropped into the middle of the ocean, the good just cannot get in. ‘He cannot see when good cometh.’ He is blind, blind, blind!

But look at how it could be: ‘He shall not fear when heat cometh,and shall not be careful in the year of drought.’ The tree, that sends its roots towards a river that never fails, does not suffer when all the land is parched. The man who has driven his roots into God, and is drawing from that deep resource all that is needful for his life and fertility, has no reason to fear any evil, nor to gnaw his heart with anxiety should parched days come. Troubles may come, but they don’t go any deeper than the surface. It may be all cracked and caked and dry, ‘a thirsty land where no water is,’ and yet deep down there may be moisture and coolness.

Faith, which is trust, and fear are opposites. If a man has faith, he can’t have much fear. If a man has fear, he can’t have much faith. He that has his trust set upon God does not need to fear anything except the weakening or the paralysing of that trust; for so long as it lasts it changes evil into good, the true philosopher’s stone which transmutes the baser metals into gold; and, so long as it lasts, God’s shield is round him and no evil can befall him.

If our trust is in God, it is unworthy of it and of us to fear, for all things are His. Therefore, he that fears let him trust; he that trusts let him not be afraid. He that sets his heart and anchors his hopes of safety on any except God, let him be afraid, for he is in a very stern world, and if he is not fearful he is a fool. So the direction of our trust, if it is right, shuts all real evil out from us, and if it is wrong, shuts us out from all real good.

III. Are you barren, or beautiful?

Jeremiah 17:6 He will be like a juniper in the Arabah; he cannot see when good comes but dwells in the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land where no one lives.

8 He will be like a tree planted by water: it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn’t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.

The word which is translated ‘heat’ has a close connection with, if it does not literally mean, ‘naked’ or ‘bare.’ Probably it indicates some desert shrub, a cactus. Are you cactus or are you cultivating character?

I am sure that if we Christian people had a deeper faith, we should have fairer lives.

Have you heard as I have that most people would rather NOT deal with a Christian in business, because they are more likely to be ripped off by a professing Christian and be mistreated by a professing Christian than by one who is not?

Please don’t supply the other side with arguments against Christianity, by showing that it is possible for a man to say that he sets his heart on God, and yet to bear but little leafage of beauty or grace of character. Goodness is beauty; beauty is goodness. Both are to be secured by communion and union with Him who is fairer than the children of men. Dip your roots into the fountain of life — it is the fountain of beauty as well as of life, and your lives will be green.

IV. Are you sterile, or fruitful?

Jeremiah 17:5 This is what the Lord says: Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, who makes [human] flesh his strength and turns his heart from the Lord. 6 He will be like a juniper in the Arabah; he cannot see when good comes but dwells in the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land where no one lives.7 Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence indeed is the Lord.8 He will be like a tree planted by water: it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn’t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.

Real fruitfulness in the final analysis of things only comes about by real trust in the Lord. Many non-christian people live very moral and fruitful lives, particularly if we looked at morality and self sacrifice. BUT the problem is, what is real fruitfulness. Real fruitfulness is defined only in relationship with God.

It reminds me of the productive life a man lived as a cook on a sailing ship. Everyone on that ship loved the cook. He cared for the men. He took an interest in each one. He tried his absolute best to please the men with his cooking. When the government caught up with him they hanged him. You se, he was the cook on a pirate ship. The ship was in rebellion against the British crown. For all the good he did, his goodness was travelling in the wrong direction. So often our hearts, deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, can clothe themselves in some very good living. They can look so good. But they are still in rebellion against a holy God. And because we are travelling the wrong direction, we are cursed by God. Our fruitfulness can look very fine, but in fact it is barren and bare.

Thus we come back to this — the prime thing about a man is the direction which his trust takes. Is it to God? Then the tree is good; and its fruit will be good too.

The symptom of the deep problem in our lives is trusting in the wrong thing. The diagnosis is a deceitful heart. The prognosis is a withered and hardened life.

3. The Hope For Our Hearts

Jer 17: 13 Lord, the hope of Israel, all who abandon You will be put to shame. All who turn away from Me will be written in the dirt, for they have abandoned the fountain of living water, the Lord.

14 Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me, and I will be saved, for You are my praise.

Is there a cure for the deceitful heart? In verse 14, Jeremiah begins to reflect on the condition of his own heart and make his petition to God.

Jeremiah realizes that he needs outside help to cure his heart. So do we. We can’t heal our heart by moving to a new city, changing our spouse, changing careers or relocating to a more affluent neighborhood. The problem lies within us, so no rearrangement of life will be effective. We will take the same heart with us wherever we go.

Jeremiah points us in the right direction. The only cure available comes from God. Our heart is horribly diseased and sick. It is incurable. Bypass surgery will not work. What we need is a transplant: a new heart. And that is what God is capable of doing. That is his specialty.

“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (Jer. 31:33)

God heals and saves. By his Spirit he regenerates and renews our heart. By his Spirit he wipes clean the tablet of our heart that has been engraved with a record of our sin, and writes his law on it.

The Lord Jesus said the very same thing to a leading Rabbi, Nicodemus. He said “You must be born again.” The solution, is a new heart! Ezek 36: 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will place My Spirit within you and cause you to follow My statutes and carefully observe My ordinances.

How does it happen..transferring our trust to Him.

Consider Acts 16 Lydia.. the Lord opened her heart. 14 A woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God, was listening. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was spoken by Paul.

Will you trust yourself to the Lord and let Him do this radical heart surgery upon your life?